The BREAKING
Process
“When God allows the
breaking process to happen in a believers life, it can and will be a very dark
time. Picture Job; crying over the bodies of his dead children. Picture Joseph;
betrayed by his brothers for twenty dollars. Picture Jesus; sweating in anguish
over His fear, and God’s will. So, for every reader who is caught in between
life and death, smiles and sorrow, you and Him… Rejoice! For you rebirth is
near.” ~Kirk
Franklin
You
go to the altar. You say the prayer. You get your free Bible and someone to
pray with you. Your broken heart is mended, your spirit feels alive, and from
now on it’s just you and God and great times ahead. Is that so? Your old sinful
self is gone, never to pop his grotesque face up again. Oh, is he? Is one pray
on a Sunday morning all it takes to rid yourself of every false self you ever
put up between yourself and God? No, my friend, it is only the first. There is
a breaking process.
Consider
when you first said the salvation prayer, and of course you meant it. You
didn’t want to live the way you always have, and God doesn’t want you to
either, it’s destructive to your health. So in an attempt to live the life of
holiness you long for to please your Savior, life becomes a vigorous task of
dos and don’ts, and the Rule Book is the Bible. The Law, is what the Pharisee’s
called it. But who wants to live like a Pharisee? When life becomes a endless
struggle to keep every word of the Law, then the work of Jesus on the cross
that you accepted has become nothing to you. Because the Law, not sinning
anymore, is what saves you. Or is it? The apostle Paul, possibly the greatest
Christian leader of all time, didn’t think so.
“For
I though the law, died to the law, that I might live to God. I have been
crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me, and
the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God; who
loved me and gave Himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for it
if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain.” (Gal.
2:19-21) This man seemed to think that the Law wouldn’t break him of the sin in
his life, and turn him into a new person. He said he is crucified with Christ,
and that makes him no longer subject to the law, because his right standing
with God is from God’s own grace, no the law. How then can we live the life of
a Christian man or women that we want to? You have to be broken. And the Law
will never break you. But the cross will.
Jesus
was broken. He broke everything in His time on Earth. Religious mind sets,
social boundaries, the power of sin of our lives, the very Gates of Hell, and
the chains of the old law, saying we now live our lives by grace. And He
Himself was broken at the Cross, as no man can ever imagine. “He was beaten
for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities.” He had to be broken,
because it was the only hope for any of us.
In
Matthew He addresses the Pharisee’s, who believed following the Law was the
only way for a man to be righteous, and calls himself the “stone rejected by
the builders” and now “the chief corner stone.” Paul ask the
question in Romans that many of us would marvel at; the Gentiles (us) didn’t go
after holiness, but got it. The children of Israel did pursue holiness, and
missed it. Why? “Because they didn’t seek it by faith, but by works of the
Law. For they stumbled at the stumbling stone.” (Rom. 9:30-33) A stumbling
stone, what is that? You have to look to the prophet Isaiah, who prophesied in
8:14 “Behold, I lay in Zion a stumbling stone and a rock of offense. And
whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.” Him?
Capital “h”? There’s a name you don’t hear Jesus referred to as very often-
“the Stumbling Stone”. Jesus is the Offensive Rock that the Pharisee’s and the
Law couldn’t get over. The Law would all make sense, the theology of man
working his way to God would all be fine and dandy- if not for the Stumbling
Stone placed in Zion. That Law would have killed us. God had to trip up his own
Law to save us. How about that? But wait, there’s something else Jesus said
back in Matthew after calling Himself the rejected stone; “And whoever falls
on this stone will be broken; but on whomever it falls, it will grind
him to powder.”
Broken?
Oh no. The Stumbling Stone will break us? I don’t want to broken, I don’t’ know
about you, but I don’t want to be. But it’s the only way. Saved by grace,
re-birthed by being broken. What’s it mean to be broke? If you’re Job, it means
your beloved children you pray for everyday die a violent death. If you you’re
Abraham, it means you have to sacrifice your only son on a pile of stones on
top of a mountain. If you’re Joseph, it means those closet to you will betray
you and you’ll be falsely accused of attempted rape. If you’re David it means
you’re “forgotten like a dead man, out of mind” (Psalm 31:12), and if
you’re Jesus, it means “My God! God!! Why?! Why have you forsaken me?!” Broken
is defeated, it’s maimed, it’s losing everything you were counting on and
believing in. It’s a process. And it’s Jesus. Paul was broken for Jesus, David
was broken for Jesus, even Jesus was broken for who He was! Why?!
Because
nothing new is born without something being broken first.
Job was reborn a richer man than ever; Joseph
was reborn a lord over a great nation; David was reborn a king; and Jesus was
reborn the glorified King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And Scripture says “the
same resurrecting power that raised Christ from the dead is working in us”!
That re-birthing power is alive and working in all Christians, right now. It
has been since the moment they first believed. It’s a process. Old things must
die, before the new thing can be born. It’s a principle of Scripture. Look
around; it’s the very law of nature! An egg shell’s cracked to get to the yoke,
a seed is buried and burst open before it turns into a beautiful tree. Even a
woman is “broken” before she can give birth to a new living creation. Break
before birth. It’s just the way it is.
So
where does this leave us? I myself feel broken at many times, particularly
right now in my life. Things are taken away; my best-laid plans get thwarted.
And God keeps saying no, he keeps “tripping up” all my attempts to be who He’s
made me to be on my own. He’s got to break me before he can re-build me. It’s a
slow process. And I’m a slower learner. But it can only mean that the re-birth
of Jeremy Pace is near. Let me leave you with one more scripture from Proverbs
17, verse 22; “A merry heart does good like medicine, but a broken spirit
dries the bones.”
Read
Ezekiel. Y’all know what to do with dry bones.